Gawker: defamer, little miss sunshine

Academy Moves To Make Producer-Credit Rules Marginally Less Stringent

Mark — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:16:00 EDT

All around town, producers whose often-fuzzy roles in bringing together the various elements necessary to get prestige projects before rolling cameras are throwing open their windows and offering up an exultant "Huzzah! to the Hollywood heavens, as the Academy has ever so slightly loosened its Draconian rules about the number of people allowed to storm the Kodak Theatre stage in the unlikely event of a Best Picture win. Reports the NY Times:

Bruised by disputes over which of a film's producers are entitled to a best-picture award, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, said it would now, "in a rare and extraordinary circumstance," consider crediting more than three producers as nominees. An eight-year-old policy had limited the number of qualifying producers to three. [...]

In announcing the change Sidney Ganis, the film academy's president, said officials wanted to preserve a limit on the number of credits. But, he added, "a truly unique situation could arise, and we want to have just enough flexibility to allow for that rare occurrence."

Ganis admitted that he was "thrilled" that the rules change could help people like Little Miss Sunshine's Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, who were denied their share of the credit when their "delightfully overrated labor of love" made its improbable Best Picture run back in February. But he was careful to note that there was some give-and-take necessary to push through this crucial alteration; to compensate for the possibility that credit in special cases like Sunshine's would be dealt with more equitably, the Academy's board quietly introduced a measure that would bar any film in which Paramount emperor Brad Grey had direct involvement from Oscar recognition, because, in Ganis's words, "It's just so much fun to fuck with that guy."

Oscar Rules Regarding Producing Are Relaxed [NY Times]
Previously: Oscar SnubWatch: Brad Grey Uncredited, Again [Defamer]

Alan Arkin: Hollywood's Voice Of Reason

Mark — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:10:50 EST

One of the last things we saw before we collapsed head-first into our laptop mere moments after the final credits rolled on the Oscar telecast was this press release from Access Hollywood, concerning the virtue-protecting jinx eventual Best Supporting Actor usurper Alan Arkin put on precocious co-star Abigail Breslin:

On the Oscar® red carpet, when asked how Breslin is responding to the attention as a Oscar® nominee (nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role), Arkin said, "I hope she loses frankly. No, I'm serious. I am not joking."
Arkin added, "I hope she loses. What, next year she is going to get the Nobel Prize, it's enough. She has had enough attention. I love her and I love her family; and I feel enough is enough. She is a kid; she needs to have a childhood....I hope she loses."

Sunday truly was Arkin's night: Not only did he send Eddie Murphy into a sure spiral of despair (we expect that tomorrow he's going to announce that he's done with any roles in which he can't shield himself from disappointment beneath a protective layer of latex cellulite), his red carpet hex shielded Breslin from Oscar's corrupting influence. And he did it relatively tactfully: He didn't even need to mention the words "Dakota Fanning" for us to know he doesn't want his onscreen granddaughter winding up in any rape movies until she's a little more grown up.

2007 Oscars [Access Hollywood]

Short Ends: The 'Little Miss Sunshine' Character Quirk Scramble

Mark — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:16:20 EST

· Oscar FunTime: The Big Screen Little Screen invites you to participate in the kind of "Pick One Quirk From Column A, Then One From Column B" character work that's carried Little Miss Sunshine to multiple Academy Awards nominations.
· American Idol shocker! Contestant pees into toilet, has breasts!
· Now even minor league hockey teams are victimizing Britney Spears.
· Tired of Studio 60 video parodies? Mix it up with one about Heroes.
· Annals of Unauthorized Celebrity Endorsements: Alicia Silverstone and the Indian tongue scraper.

Fox Searchlight Bets The Way To An Oscar Voters Heart Is Through His Sweet Tooth

Mark — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:30:26 EST

As long as we're on the subject of unconventional marketing campaigns for awards contenders, we pass along an operative's report of how her Sunday brunch was interrupted by Fox Searchlight's frosted Oscar-pandering on behalf of its hopeful Little Best Picture:

The "Little Miss Sunshine" people are clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to pre-Oscar publicity. This Sunday, my friend and I were having brunch on Third St in West Hollywood when a busboy came out with a tray of cupcakes and people started taking them. "Would you like a free cupcake, for 'Little Miss Sunshine'?" he asked us. We of course said yes and he gave us not one, but two yellow-iced cupcakes. Heath Ledger was there, so maybe it worked on him. Pretty gross, in my opinion.

In Searchlight's defense, targeting Third Street brunch spots is a savvy move, as the odds of getting a cupcake into an Academy member's hand at such a location is probably 50/50 on a Sunday. Maybe they can even take the adorable guerilla campaign a step further, planting publicists throughout the restaurants on that strip, who can spend all afternoon enthusiastically talking about how delicious the little yellow-iced treats are, hoping that the relentlessness of their endorsements might convince any nearby Oscar voters to put aside the nagging feeling that the cupcake they just finished was really overrated.

Previously: 'Dreamgirls' Team Embracing Nontraditional Marketing Opportunities During Oscar Crunchtime [Defamer]

Writers Guild Wondering Why It Didn't Think Of 'Dead Grandpa In The Trunk Of The Car' Line First

Seth — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:55:06 EST

· The WGA awards Michael Arnd's Little Miss Sunshine screenplay their top award, as much for its quirky tragicomic dialogue as for the deftness with which it handled such highly plausible scenarios as Steve Carell, in a scene that gives added meaning to the term "convenience store," running into his former grad student at a Kwik-E-Mart in the middle of nowhere. The Departed took best adapted screenplay. [Variety]
· Helen Mirren snagged the BAFTA for best actress, Forest Whitaker best actor, and The Queen the year's best picture. Alan Arkin, sans fat-suit roles to siphon some of the acclaim, walks away with best supporting, as does Jennifer Hudson, who now officially shits bigger than Simon Cowell. [The Envelope]
· Clint Eastwood thinks Martin Scorsese has a good chance of winning the Oscar because "there is a lot of sympathy for him," but that he "always feel sorry for the others, because...they've worked very hard on their projects, too. I don't think any two people should be singled out." Five, on the other hand, are fine for singling out. [Reuters]
· The Visual Effects Society Awards (the Effexies?) gave Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest six prizes, including the two biggest. The ILM website has a ridiculously cool interactive demonstration of how they did it. [Variety, BoingBoing]
· Cars, Pixar's dark vision of an autopian future in which human beings are bred in subterranean farms and mulched for fuel, grabbed the top Annie award, but DreamWorks' Flushed Away, about the delighful rats who crawl out of toilets while you're going about your business, wins most Annies overall. [AnnieAwards.com]

Awards Round-Up: More From The Flackies

Seth — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:00:23 EST

· More 2007 Flackies highlights: CBS President Nina Tassler picked up the Television Showmanship Award, Sony's Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal won the Motion Picture Showmanship Award, and Bob Barker, accepting the ICG President's Award, reminded the crowd "to have your pets spayed and neutered," though the microphone was quickly turned off before he could go on to suggest doing the same for publicists. [Variety]
· An e-mailed conversation between Fox Searchlight's two nominated screenwriters, Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) and Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal). It's billed as "dishy," but we've read it twice now and there isn't a single word about how Abigail Breslin is actually a 48-year-old woman with a growth deficiency. [The Envelope]
· Your completely unsubstantiated Oscars rumor of the day: Diana Ross has been approached to sing one of the three nominated Dreamgirls songs. [Starpulse]
· Honorary Oscar recipient Ennio Morricone thought he'd never win an Oscar, telling the AP, "I have received so many beautiful, incredible prizes, but there was a little hole. Maybe the Oscar fills the hole." Maybe he does, Ennio. Maybe he does. [AP]
· Our favorite Oscar headline of the day: "Botox-aided pianist: Oscar cocumentary nod a 'gas'" No, we are not kidding. [Jewish Journal]

Oscars Round-Up: Oscar Vs. Blogger

Seth — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:10:18 EST

· The Academy has finally caught wind of the blogowebs, and they'll just as soon set their petticoats on fire than let Oscarwatch.com confuse readers who might be searching for the official Oscar® blog that updates once every couple of weeks. [The Envelope, Oscarwatch]
· More tidbits from this year's Oscar luncheon: A record 139 nominees showed up, Peter O'Toole got a standing ovation, and the entire cast of Babel can be clearly seen giving the shocker in the class portrait. [Variety]
· The Secret Black Oscars, which Forest Whitaker hinted at in a Newsweek interview, is "not a protest or a statement," he told a reporter at the luncheon. [Reuters]
· 19-time Oscar-nominated bridesmaid Kevin O'Connell, a sound mixer once again recognized for his work on Apocalypto, told fellow nominees never to give up: "I've saved all my acceptance speeches, all the ones I've written on the backs of napkins and programs. They are all in a drawer at home." Martin Scorsese smiled and nodded his head as he listened politely, then leaned over to Mark Wahlberg to whisper, "Do me a favor. If I become that guy, shoot me in the back of the head, will you?" [Hello]
· Thank you BBC, for bothering to report what they actually lunched on: "They dined on a menu of smoked salmon canape with dill mousse, Italian herb marinated breast of chicken and sorbets in a chocolate cup." As Abigail Breslin dove into the final course, Greg Kinnear leaned towards his Little Miss Sunshine co-star to warn her that the frozen dessert will make her too fat to win on Oscar night. [BBC]

Little Best Picture Vs. Snubgirls

Mark — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:54:02 EST

While we're generally content to let our wrong-coasted siblings over at Gawker have all the adventures in contextual advertising, we ran across this Little Miss Sunshine For Your Consideration ad in rotation around today's story about What Went Wrong with Paramount/DreamWorks' Oscar campaign for Dreamgirls. (Refreshing the page a few times might also yield a peek at the Dreamgirls FYC spot fighting for too-little-too-late pageviews.) If you watch Fox Searchlight's animated attempt to rub in "Little Best Picture's" nomination triumph closely enough, you may be able to see a single, fleeting frame in which the Sunshine's drug-addled grandpa symbolically shoves Beyoncé out of the film's iconic VW bus.

'Dreamgirls' Banked on Best Picture, and Lost [NY Times]

SAG Awards Round-Up: Forest Pumped

Seth — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:26:19 EST

· Winner Forest Whitaker remembers the lean days fondly: "I could live on somebody's couch and live on ramen. My friends and my family were more concerned than I was." Particularly the friends and family on whose couches he was dripping ramen broth for months at a time. [Variety]
· Curl up with Tom O'Neil, whose post-SAG awards video blog post delivered from his bed was only slightly less disturbing than the Carpetbagger's post in which he lamented Dreamgirls' best picture snub while sitting on the toilet. [The Envelope]
· Jonathan Dayton, co-director of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture winner Little Miss Sunshine, explains his theory of good comedy: "For humor to really work, 25 percent of the people can't really get it. If it's really funny, not everyone will be in on the joke." So if you didn't find the movie hilarious, you now know it's because you're part of the quarter of the population incapable of getting it. [The Carpetbagger]
· Transcripts of some notable acceptance speeches, including Alec Baldwin's win for 30 Rock, in which he makes special mention of focus puller Jonathan, who "shaves six or eight years off my close-ups." [SAG Awards]
· Moments after a cloud of green smoke had dissipated, nominee and amateur illusionist Will Smith wowed red carpet photographers by successfully transforming his flamingo date into spouse Jada Pinkett-Smitt. [The Envelope]
· Asked if there's a chance of a Little Miss Sequel, screenwriter Michael Arndt admitted he "has been thinking of things," but that he wasn't sure audiences would want to go along for the re-animating grandpa ride. [THR]

The Oscar Nominations: And We're Telling You 'Dreamgirls' Is Not Going To Win Best Picture

Mark — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:36:44 EST

Hollywood's Christmas Morning is finally here, the time when eager Oscar hopefuls rise at an obscenely early hour, rush downstairs in their footie pajamas, and hope to find the previous year's good career behavior validated with lovingly wrapped awards nominations left under the Academy's gilded tree; those deemed good enough for recognition spend the day fielding phone calls from the media, who ask difficult questions about how it feels to be on the receiving end of the golden shower of adoration offered by one's peers (invariably, it feels good! And it's an honor just to be nominated!), while the snubbed quickly retreat back up the stairs to their bedrooms, where they self-medicate their soul-crushing disappointment by swallowing handfuls of prescription painkillers, sobbing through their publicist's assurances that they're still so very, very pretty, and that in this day of the YouTubes, no one watches the Oscars anyway.

This morning, the formerly frontrunning Dreamgirls crew is caught somewhere between elation and the sweet release of barbiturate overdose, as their film led the nominations with eight, but was shut out in the Best Picture, Best Director, and lead actor categories; somewhere on their Melrose lot, Paramount and DreamWorks publicists are staring at a ringing phone, wondering whether to pick it up and emphasize the positives of their eight nods and that their boss, studio emperor Brad Grey, is happy that he's been released from the uncomfortable position of having equally beloved films facing off in the big races, or to let the calls roll into voicemail as they somberly march outside and drown themselves in the nearby fountain in the ultimate act of failed For Your Consideration self-nullification.

In other notable developments: your nominees for The Big One are The Departed, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, and Letters from Iwo Jima; Babel received seven nominations; Martin Scorsese gets another shot at the cruelly elusive Best Director prize; our beloved, criminally overlooked Children of Men got three bids; Leonardo DiCaprio avoided another doomed Golden Globes-style showdown with himself by landing just one Best Actor nod; Borat snuck in to the Best Adapted Screenplay race; Ryan Gosling's crackhead teacher and Jackie Earle Haley's child-molester performance were recognized in the lead and supporting categories, respectively; and the producers of Best Picture nominees The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine are sweating as the Academy sorts out who will get the chance the have their acceptance speech interrupted by the orchestra as the ceremony creeps toward the four-hour mark.

A partial list of nominees (i.e., the categories you care about) is after the jump:

Best motion picture of the year
"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
"The Departed" (Warner Bros.)
"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.)
"Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)

Achievement in directing
"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Alejandro González Iñárritu
"The Departed" (Warner Bros.) Martin Scorsese
"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.) Clint Eastwood
"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Stephen Frears
"United 93" (Universal and StudioCanal) Paul Greengrass

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Leonardo DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.)
Ryan Gosling in "Half Nelson" (THINKFilm)
Peter O'Toole in "Venus" (Miramax, Filmfour and UK Council)
Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland" (Fox Searchlight)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Penélope Cruz in "Volver" (Sony Pictures Classics)
Judi Dench in "Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight)
Helen Mirren in "The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)
Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada" (20th Century Fox)
Kate Winslet in "Little Children" (New Line)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Alan Arkin in "Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
Jackie Earle Haley in "Little Children" (New Line)
Djimon Hounsou in "Blood Diamond" (Warner Bros.)
Eddie Murphy in "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount)
Mark Wahlberg in "The Departed" (Warner Bros.)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Adriana Barraza in "Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
Cate Blanchett in "Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight)
Abigail Breslin in "Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
Jennifer Hudson in "Dreamgirls" (DreamWorks and Paramount)
Rinko Kikuchi in "Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)

Adapted screenplay
"Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (20th Century Fox)
Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer
Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips

"Children of Men" (Universal)
Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby

"The Departed" (Warner Bros.)
Screenplay by William Monahan

"Little Children" (New Line)
Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta

"Notes on a Scandal" (Fox Searchlight)
Screenplay by Patrick Marber

Original screenplay
"Babel" (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
Written by Guillermo Arriaga

"Letters from Iwo Jima" (Warner Bros.)
Screenplay by Iris Yamashita
Story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis

"Little Miss Sunshine" (Fox Searchlight)
Written by Michael Arndt

"Pan's Labyrinth" (Picturehouse)
Written by Guillermo del Toro

"The Queen" (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)
Written by Peter Morgan

[Photo: Getty Images]

Nominations List [Oscars.org]
Oscar nominations unveiled [The Envelope]
Academy Award nominations [Variety]
'Dreamgirls' leads Oscar noms, misses best picture [THR]
'Dreamgirls' Picks Up Most Oscar Nods [AP]

Awards Round-Up: 'Little Miss' Holy Crap!

Seth — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:49:31 EST

· The 3,300 members of the Producers Guild of America surprised just about everyone by giving its top honor to Little Miss Sunshine, the little Sundance acquisition that could. With the PGA predicting the Best Picture Oscar 11 out of the past 17 years, a Crash-style upset for Sunshine isn't beyond the realm of possibility—nor is the requisite musical number, featuring interpretive dancers pirouetting on the roof of a VW bus as Sufjan Stevens strums "Chicago" on an acoustic guitar. [Variety]
· The GLAAD Media Awards nominated Little Miss Sunshine, The Night Listener, Running With Scissors, V for Vendetta, and Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby for outstanding film in wide release. Ricky Bobby made the list presumably for the maturity with which the comedy portrayed the relationship between Sacha Baron Cohen's French Grand Prix champion and his poodle-trainer lover, played by Andy Richter. Despite its enthusiastic gay pride parade sequences and the great strides it made in humanizing the experiences of rubber-fist-dildo enthusiasts, Cohen's other effort this year, Borat, was egregiously overlooked. [THR]
· On the eve of the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations announcement, Cohen admitted to a WGA Q&A audience that Borat, whose production notes originally read "there was no script," actually was the work of four writers, with up to 80% of the final film was comprised of scenes they "set out to accomplish." Still, all the studio saw was a five-page outline, not the secret, 60-page detailed master bible the filmmakers were working from. [The Envelope]

· Since we already know who the Best Picture favorites are, here are the dark horses: Letters from Iwo Jima, Borat, United 93, and Pan's Labyrinth. [Reuters]
· "I wish there was an Oscar for extras. I'm not even joking because the performances they gave are so compelling and so rich and so deep." That's Razzie honoree Sharon Stone literally thanking the little people, whose compelling work as Ambassador Hotel background party guests buttressed her mostly non-lauded performance in Bobby. [Starpulse]

Awards Round-Up: The DGA Can't Resist Getting Down To 'Superfreak'

Seth — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 16:06:37 EST

· The Directors Guild of America announced its short list of five nominees, including Martin Scorsese, Bill Condon, Stephen Frears, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and Little Miss Sunshine collaborators Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, leading us to wonder why we don't see more directing duos willing to evenly split their control-freak impulses. [MSNBC]
· Even publicists have awards! The nominees for the Maxwell Weinberg Award for the year's top publicity campaign include Borat, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Happy Feet, and United 93. World Trade Center's campaign, which voters felt relied too heavily on the solicitation of MySpace friendships and currying favor with Tila Tequila, was passed over for recognition. [Variety]
· The Scripter, an unusual award from the USC libraries that recognizes the achievement of both authors and the screenwriters who transform that source material into successful screen adaptions, have narrowed the field of nominees to the teams responsible for Children of Men, The Devil Wears Prada, The Illusionist, The Last King of Scotland, and Notes on a Scandal. [THR]
· Don't forget: Tomorrow is the deadline to get those Golden Globe ballots in, HFPA members! Oh, and for anyone who cares, the People's Choice Awards are tonight. [The Envelope]

· The Irish Film & Television Academy nominate Babel, Casino Royale, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and United 93 for the best international film prize at the Irish Film & TV Awards, while Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto is the frontrunner for their domestic prize. [Variety]
· Canada's Genie nominations were announced today, with Bon Cop, Bad Cop, starring Colm Feore and Patrick Huard as odd couple cops who bond over a common passion for catching the bad guys and a shared love of poutine, leading the way. [CP]
· TV Week's semi-annual critics poll names The Wire the best series on TV, followed by Heroes, The Office, a tied-for-fourth Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Friday Night Lights, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, and (cough) Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip rounding out the top 10. [MercuryNews.com]

Awards Round-Up: The San Diego Critics Have Spoken

Seth — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:42:39 EST

In our ongoing effort to bring you the best of year end movie lists and awards—no critics' circle too far or too small!—another round-up:
· Chargers fans also love Clint Eastwood, as Letters From Iwo Jima is awarded best picture and Eastwood best director from the San Diego Film Critics Society. And while Helen Mirren once again gets top actress honors (her certificate, suitable for framing, is in the mail), they then proceed to throw several curveballs in the other acting categories, including Lili Taylor as best supporting actress for Factotum, Ray Winstone as best supporting actor for The Proposition, and Ken Takakura as best actor for his work in Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. From the title alone, that sounds to have been a lot more demanding a role than Mirren's, which mainly required her to sit around in a palace, sip tea, and act bitchy. [Variety]
· The Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards gave United 93 best picture, Mirren best actress, Forest Whitaker best actor, and Little Miss Sunshine best screenplay, proving stretching out Blind Melon's "No Rain" video into 100 minutes of indie movie quirk clichés was an idea whose time had come. [OscarWatch]
· indieWIRE's first annual Critics Poll—a descendant of the Village Voice poll— asked 107 North American film critics to assess the year's best, with a special eye to movies that may have been overlooked. Number One, and far ahead of the pack, is Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. [IndieWire.com]
· The Onion A.V. Club gives their top honor to Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, with special mentions to the underrated Brick (#4), and Half Nelson (#6), which succeeds in its inner-city high school inspirational teacher story despite a lack of a Coolio song on the soundtrack. [AV Club]

Fox's 'Little Miss Sunshine' Promo Event Earns Many Flipped Birds

Seth — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:00:57 EDT

To promote Fox Searchlight's small scale comedy Little Miss Sunshine, the Fox marketing department had someone drive the movie's iconic VW bus around town. An eyewitness managed to snap a cameraphone photo of the saffron-hued promobile, which, through either faulty mechanics or bad driving, managed to make afternoon traffic on Pico Blvd. even worse:

Just in case anybody cares: Yes, that was the VW bus from the movie Little Miss Sunshine f-ing up traffic this afternoon on Pico, just east of its home at the Fox lot. Not sure if this lame camera phone picture will show it or not, but the license plate clearly said "Sunshine" with a logo from the movie. It sounded as thought the van was having some serious engine trouble. That or someone was just learning to drive one of those shifter cars.

We have a feeling this may well have been the last tour of duty for the star-on-wheels, which should quickly find itself pulled out of the shooting range of irate commuters, and installed instead in the safety of some photo-op-friendly spot on the Fox lot. Fox publicity, meanwhile, is hoping their upcoming promotional event, in which Little Miss star Steve Carrell will shave a giant happy face into his chest and hand out lemon ices to passersby will prove more to be more of a crowd pleaser.